Category playbooks for DTC brands
Socks look like the simplest wholesale product in the world until the first purchase order arrives and the buyer has written a size breakdown across four columns. Knit goods are sold in size runs, and a size run is what turns a tidy case of twelve into a logistics decision.
Everything else about the category is straightforward. The unit is light, the freight is cheap, the margin holds at half of retail, and shops reorder fast when a pattern moves. But the brand that has not thought about sizes before it quotes a case pack will spend its first year sitting on small and extra large.
What a size run does to your case pack
A shop does not want twelve pairs. A shop wants twelve pairs that match the feet walking through the door.
Most sock brands run either letter sizing, small through extra large, or a shoe-size band printed on the band: six to eight and a half, nine to twelve, and so on. Either way, the demand inside a store is shaped like a hill. The middle sizes go first, every time, in every kind of shop.
So a case of twelve in one style is never twelve of one size. It is a run, and the run has to be weighted the way the hill is:
- two small, four medium, four large, two extra large for a unisex style
- or six medium, six large where the range only runs two sizes
Sell a shop twelve evenly split across four sizes and within a month they have sold the mediums and larges, and they are looking at six unsold pairs in sizes their customers do not wear. They will not reorder, and they will not tell you why.
How do you build a prepack that does not leave odd sizes?
A prepack, sometimes written as an assortment or a pack, is a pre-built size run sold as one unit with one item code. It is the right way to write an opening order and the wrong way to write a reorder.
Build it in two halves.
For the opening order, sell prepacks only. One item code, one price, one weighted run, no thinking required from the buyer. It also protects the brand, because a first-time buyer guessing at sizes guesses badly and then blames the product.
For reorders, open the range up to single pairs. Let the shop reorder by size and colour, with a minimum of six pairs per line. This single policy is the biggest service difference between a brand shops keep and a brand they try once. The buyer who sold through the mediums needs mediums, not another whole run.
Put both on the line sheet side by side: the prepack code with its breakdown spelled out, and the open-stock code with its per-line minimum. The general mechanics of packing the box around those numbers are in case pack.
What has to be on the sock itself
Hosiery is one of the gentler apparel categories for labelling, because the required information can sit on the packaging rather than on a sewn-in label. It still has to be there.
- Fibre content, written out fibre by fibre in order of predominance, with the share of each one stated. Trade names on their own are not enough; the generic fibre has to appear.
- Country of origin. Where the socks were knit, stated plainly.
- The manufacturer or dealer identity — the registered identification number if the brand has one, or the full business name.
- Care instructions, which for socks is usually one line but still has to be a real one.
Practically, that means the header card, the band or the polybag carries a small block of text on the back. Design it in from the start rather than adding a sticker later, because a sticker on a knit good reads as a sample and a buyer will notice.
Hangtag, header card or belly band?
Ask the buyer which fixture the socks will live on, because the answer decides the packaging.
A peg hook needs a header card with a euro slot or a round hole, folded over the top of the pair and stapled or sealed. Gift shops, bookstores and anywhere with slatwall will peg socks, because a peg holds a lot of units in very little space and shows the pattern.
A folded stack or a table needs a belly band or a rolled pair with a printed wrap. Menswear boutiques and apparel stores merchandise this way, and a header card looks wrong on their table.
A bowl or bin at the till needs the pair rolled with a small sticker and nothing else. This is the impulse position and it is worth having a version for it.
Offer at least two of the three, and note on the line sheet which packaging comes with which item code. A brand that can say "carded for peg, or rolled for a table, same price" answers a question the buyer was about to raise.
What a knitting mill will actually make
This is the part that catches DTC brands hardest, because Shopify has trained everyone to think in ones.
A knitting mill quotes minimums per style, per colourway, and often per size inside that colourway. Somewhere between two hundred and forty and six hundred pairs per colourway is normal for a small run, and a four-colour range across four sizes becomes a very large first cheque very quickly.
Three things bring that number down:
- Keep one base yarn across the range. The mill can knit the whole collection in one setup, and yarn is where the minimum really lives.
- Change the pattern, not the yarn. A knit-in design change is cheap. A new fibre blend is not.
- Launch two colourways properly rather than six thinly. Six colours in half runs leaves gaps in every size, and gaps are what kill reorders.
Get the mill's lead time in writing before quoting anything to a buyer, and add two weeks to it. Apparel purchase orders carry dates, and dates in apparel are enforced.
The arithmetic on a prepack of twelve
Take a pair that retails at sixteen dollars and wholesales at eight, in a prepack of twelve.
Per pair: knitting at a six hundred pair run around three dollars ten, the header card or band thirty-five cents, the polybag six cents. Call it three fifty-one landed. Twelve pairs cost about forty-two dollars and twelve cents. Add a dollar for the inner box.
The prepack costs roughly forty-three dollars and sells for ninety-six. Fifty-three dollars of margin on something that weighs about two pounds and ships for single digits. Four prepacks in one carton is a two-hundred-dollar order that costs about twelve dollars to send.
That is a healthy shape. The danger is not the margin, it is the inventory: unsold small and extra large from twelve colourways is a warehouse full of money that will only ever clear at cost.
Outdoor, gift and menswear are three different businesses
A sock brand usually has to pick one to start, because the product, the packaging and the buying calendar all differ.
Outdoor and technical. Specialty running shops, outfitters, bike shops, ski shops. They care about cushioning zones, merino content, fit and the replenishment programme. They buy at outdoor trade shows, they want a rep, and they reorder steadily all year on best sellers rather than chasing novelty. Slow to get in, very sticky once in.
Gift and novelty. Gift shops, bookstores, museum shops, garden centres. They buy the pattern and the joke, in small quantities, pegged, on a fast seasonal cycle. Easy first yes, and the reorder depends entirely on whether the design lands.
Menswear and dress. Menswear boutiques, tailors, barbershops, shoe shops. They buy by colour story, twice a year, folded rather than carded, and they expect a level of finish in the packaging that the gift channel does not.
Trying to serve all three from one line sheet produces a line sheet that convinces nobody. Pick the channel the product was designed for and work it properly, in the order set out in how to get into retail stores.
Buying seasons, market weeks and delivery windows
Apparel buys ahead, and this is the habit a DTC brand has to learn fastest.
Autumn and holiday orders are written in the first quarter of the year. Spring orders are written in late summer. Regional apparel marts run market weeks on that calendar, and the outdoor side runs on its own trade show schedule in summer and winter. A brand that shows up in October with a holiday range is a year early or ten months late depending on how you look at it.
The purchase order will carry two dates: a ship date and a cancel date. Missing the cancel date means the buyer can legally refuse the goods, and some will. Treat those dates as the actual deliverable.
The other half of the calendar is in-season reordering. Gift shops that sell out of a pattern in December want more within a week, not in six. Holding cured, packed stock of the top three sellers is what turns one prepack into a standing account. Whether a rep should be carrying that calendar for you is covered in independent sales reps, and the way the order itself should be structured in opening order.
The first ten doors for a sock brand
Work them in the order that matches the range rather than top to bottom.
- Specialty running shops, for technical and compression styles.
- Outdoor outfitters and hiking stores.
- Bike shops, which sell socks as an impulse add-on at the counter.
- Ski and snowboard shops, on the opposite seasonal calendar.
- Menswear boutiques and tailors, for dress and patterned styles.
- Barbershops, which sell a tiny, high-margin accessory selection.
- Bookstores and museum shops, for pattern and novelty ranges.
- Independent gift shops and general stores.
- Children's boutiques, if the range includes kids sizes.
- Farm, workwear and hardware stores, for heavyweight and boot socks.
Behind that list sit the regional apparel marts, the outdoor trade shows and the independent reps who already carry three non-competing sock brands into the same doors.
When the obvious ten run out, pasting a product link into WholesalePilot gives a preview of the shop types and buyers that stock knit goods like yours, which is usually enough to tell whether the range belongs in the outdoor channel or the gift channel before committing a mill run to either.